


Saudade

by Phoenixflames12



Category: Poldark - All Media Types, Poldark Novels
Genre: F/M, Minor Violence, Saudade, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-23
Updated: 2015-03-23
Packaged: 2018-03-19 07:48:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3602061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phoenixflames12/pseuds/Phoenixflames12
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Saudade- Portragese<br/>The feeling of longing for someone or something that you love and is lost</p><p>Finding that sleep does not come easily to the pair of them, Verity and Ross both try and come to terms with their own emotions after the events of episode 2.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Saudade

Suadade 

_The feeling of longing for someone or something that you love and is lost_

 

They both have nightmares.

 

He dreams that he is back in the sun dappled clearing again, back in Virginia; back suffocating under the stuffy autumn heat in his army uniform and is watching his comrades fall. They fall like marionettes over and over again before his terrified eyes and there is nothing, nothing he can do to stop it. In desperation he tries to shoot at whoever has uncovered their position; but the musket is too heavy and whenever he tries to lift it, he finds that his palms are slick with blood; making the weapon slip and slide across rough, scarred skin; useless.

 

There is so much blood. Blood blooms from the wound at his temple; flooding his vision, pouring out of his skin in rivers of deepest scarlet; making it impossible to move, impossible to see, impossible to think even. It is only the weight of Elizabeth’s ring that keeps him standing; the cold, hard weight of the beaten metal pressing into the callouses of his knuckle forcing him to remain upright, remain conscious as the carnage seems to sweep past his broken, blood stained vision. Remain conscious for long enough to see the blood stained carcases of his men littering the fields; their chests riddled with the dark holes left by musket shot, their mouths choking on their own blood; eyes glassy with unimaginable agony.

 

Elizabeth’s ring means nothing to him now. Elizabeth whom he had danced with on that sun kissed evening on the night before he was called up; Elizabeth with salt kissed hair and cheeks flushed with heat; dark eyes sparkling with hope and love and laughter as they spun through the flames of the dying sunset. Elizabeth who had promised herself to another; who had promised herself to another, who had…

 

‘ _At least let us part as friends!_

_‘We can never be friends’._

 

He knows that he has to help them. Help them, comfort them, try to tell them that this was not the end; that they would keep on fighting whatever the cost, that they were his brothers in life and in death; that they had not failed, that…

 

The darkness that smothers his screams is the only answer he receives.

 

She dreams of the dual. She dreams of Francis and Captain Blamely; the one fleeting dream that she had pinned her hopes on; like a favour fluttering in the rigging. She; an unmarried maid at 25; a woman who to so many would be mean so little; but to him; for those few short days; meant so much and yet…

 

She sees her brother’s face; tight, pale, blonde Francis; grey-blue eyes dark with loathing as he had cradled his musket; face set, determined to avenge her like the knights in the stories that they had been read to as children. Feels again the sudden rush of panicked fear clutch at her heart as she watched the two tramp the eternity that was Ross’s top field; faces set into the grim reality that by the end of this dreadful ordeal; one or both of them would either be fighting for his life or…

She doesn’t want to think about it. She doesn’t want to think about it and yet she can’t seem to stop thinking about the sudden shout of wounded agony that had ripped itself from Francis’s lips; the ghastly, choking sob lurching itself from Elizabeth’s throat; tall, proud, kind, devoted Elizabeth; her porcelain face soaked with tears as she dashed into the dingy front room of their cousin’s cottage.

 

She wakes with a start. The blankets are tangled around her nightgown; the faint, dove grey whispers of an early summer dawn beginning to peep its’ way through the slashed window. She feels her eyes beginning to flutter closed for a moment; desperately trying to still the thumping of her too-quick heart against the whale-bone stays of her night-gown.

 

They meet as the sun is just beginning to climb from its indigo bed. He is ragged; eyes tinged red with the strain that came from too long a time without sleep; shirt collar unbuttoned; the stubble that caresses his chin seeming even a little too pronounced to her innocent eye.

 

The soft early morning air catches at the corner of the shawl she had hastily thrown around her shoulders as she meanders her way through the rows of potatoes, kale and leeks that have been planted to meet him. He looks older; rougher; the mahogany eyes that she remembers Elizabeth describing in such tender detail when he had first gone off to war; showing all too clearly the ghosts of the horrors which he had experienced. She tries not to shudder at the scar as he rises up to meet her.

 

‘Verity’, the name seems strange to his tongue; the rough organ that winds it's way around the soft syllables still feeling sluggish with sleep.

 

‘Ross’, she feels as if she has lived for a hundred years since she had fought through her father’s arms only to be met by him pulling her up and carrying her away back into the dark security of the cottage.

 

Neither of them speak for a while and for that she is glad. The auburn fire of the sun is catching at his curls; setting the dark roots ablaze as he watches her questioningly; hoping that she will speak.

 

‘I… I couldn’t sleep’, she stammers out at last through a silence that is heavy with ghosts; heavy with the ghost of that last evening before the war when he danced with Elizabeth and was given a ring to; heavy with the rough pressure of Andrew’s… Captain Blamely’s hands as he had said his final farewell to her in the gathering twilit gloom…

 

‘Nor I’, he replies; a faint whisper of the age old grin that she remembers from their shared childhood with Elizabeth and Francis tugging at his lips as his hand slowly winds its’ way around her shoulder and for the briefest of moments, she begins to feels safe again.

* * *

 

_Fin_

**Author's Note:**

> Please feel free to read and review! Comments, suggestions, questions etc are like chocolate to my brain!
> 
> Much love and enjoy x


End file.
